TONGA VOLCANO: Sailing Thru a Sea of Pumice

This is old news, I know, but I just found it and feel compelled to share it. Pretty frickin’ cool, if you ask me. The series of photos you see up top and below were taken by Frederik Fransson and crew aboard S/V Maiken soon after they departed Tonga bound for Fiji in August 2006. They encountered great rafts of floating pumice while sailing offshore, then later witnessed the birth of a brand new island via volcanic eruption.